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Understanding the difference between UX and UI can get confusing — the roles work closely together, and sometimes the terms are used too ambiguously to firmly understand either one.

To understand the difference between UX and UI, let’s start with an example: YouTube.

Take a look at the YouTube home screen. Everything you’re seeing — the search bar at the top, the “Trending” and “Subscriptions” and “History” categories on the left, the “Recommended” videos below — is all the work of a UI designer.

At its most basic level, UI is the presentation and interactivity of a product — where’s the sign-up button, is it easy to navigate, where’s the logo and if I click the logo where does it take me?

Now, imagine every YouTube video you click loads slowly. Imagine you search “cats” and nothing comes up. Imagine you can’t search account user’s by their username, so it’s hard for you to find that girl who sang an acoustic rendition of that Ed Sheeran song.

With those actions, you’re having a less-than-ideal user experience. You don’t enjoy engaging with the product, and it isn’t offering you what you want. Those problems are the responsibility of a UX designer.

Cognitive scientist Don Norman, who first coined the term UX in the 1990s, and Jakob Nielsen, co-founder of the Nielsen Norman Group, explain the difference of UX versus UI this way:

“Consider a website with movie reviews. Even if the UI for finding a film is perfect, the UX will be poor for a user who wants information about a small independent release if the underlying database only contains movies from the major studios.”

In this example, both UX and UI are critical components for the user to enjoy the product, but a user can’t appreciate the interface of a product if the product itself doesn’t deliver what the user wants.

Let’s define UX and UI in more detail now, to further clarify the difference between the two.

What’s UX?

UX, which stands for user experience, is the process of researching, developing, and refining all aspects of a user’s interaction with a company to ensure the company is meeting the user’s needs. A UX designer must ensure people find value when they interact with a company’s products or services.

A UX designer is responsible for all aspects of a user’s interaction — this means a UX designer is not solely responsible for the technology behind a product. They’re responsible for how a user interacts with a company both on and offline, including customer service and other facets.

Essentially, a UX designer must answer the question: “How can my company’s product best meet our user’s needs?”

Now, what’s left for a UI designer to do?

What’s UI?

A UI designer’s responsibilities are more cosmetic than a UX designer’s — a UI designer is responsible for the presentation of a product. But that doesn’t mean a UI designer just picks some pictures and a logo and calls it a day.

A UI designer is responsible for how everything on a page aligns in relation to each other. The visual elements you see on a page, such as buttons and icons, and the interactivity of a product, falls on the UI designer.

Have you ever visited a website and thought, “Wow, this company is really cool and has a great product, but what really sold me was their website’s intuitive and sleek layout?”

That’s largely due to their UI designer.

How do UX and UI work together?

Now that we’ve explored UX and UI separately, let’s see how they function collaboratively.

Let’s say your company wants to develop a running app, so your CEO hires a UX designer. The UX designer is first going to do some research into competitor’s apps and your user’s pain points.

With this information, she will decide the core features of the app (“must monitor heart rate and mileage”), and explore user personas in-depth to create a site map and initial prototype.

From there, a UX designer will create wireframes, test and refine them, and convert those wireframes into mockups. Then, the UX designer will conduct research and refine the product for the market. Throughout all stages, the UX designer is focused on the structure and value of the product and how that product is or isn’t meeting user’s needs.

Towards the end of development, a UI designer will then take control over the app’s appearance, including on-screen forms, images, buttons, links, and icons.

As you can see, the primary difference between UX and UI is goals: a UX designer is focused on the users’ experience, including anything that might motivate or frustrate them, why they would or wouldn’t enjoy the product, and what the product needs to include to delight the user.

A UI designer is given those constraints — she’s told what the app must include and exclude, and how it’s going to work. Using those constraints as a guideline, she works on the design and interactivity to ensure the user understands the product and enjoys the presentation of it.

You can’t create an exceptional product without both UX and UI. Without a UX designer, YouTube would appear beautiful and appealing but completely unusable. And, without a UI designer, YouTube would be a great idea in theory but would be difficult and confusing to navigate on the screen. 

Remember when Instagram first started allowing users to post videos back in 2013?

The first Instagram videos had to be recorded on your phone and could only be up to 15 seconds long. Those were the days that people compared Instagram video to its Twitter-owned counterpart, Vine.

Instagram has come a long way since then, and it’s blown Vine out of the water. Like most of the other popular social networks, the folks at Instagram have made changes to its platform that make it easier for people to post and share videos.

In late March 2016, Instagram announced they’d start rolling out the ability for Instagram users to upload 60-second videos. For iOS users, they added that users will soon be able to make videos out of multiple clips from your camera roll.

Thanks to these changes, marketers can use the Instagram app to relate with their fans and customers, to communicate their business’ personalities and brand stories, and to express artistic creativity.

There are a lot of brands who are posting great photos on social media. But what about videos? While brands have been slower to adapt to Instagram’s video platform, many of the ones that are experimenting with it are doing it really well. Check out the examples below.

17 of the Best Instagram Video Examples

Click anywhere on the videos to play them, and click again to pause them.

1. Oreo

Oreo is known for its simple, creative social media content — and its Instagram videos don’t disappoint. The video below is a great example of a fun, creative video that works perfectly for the platform.

While we love the sound quality in this video — how satisfying is the sound of pen on paper? — it doesn’t require sound to make sense. This is a really smart move because when you’re viewing any video on Instagram, you’ll hear sound only if your device’s volume is turned on. If your phone is set to silent or vibrate — which is the case for many people, especially when they’re perusing Instagram in public — then the video will play with the sound off.

Keep this in mind when you’re planning your next Instagram video: It should either be eye-catching enough to draw people to turn on the sound within the first few seconds, or it should be able to play without sound.

2. Burger King

Here’s another Instagram video that doesn’t require sound. In fact, it’s completely silent — and the reasoning is very clever. The Burger King (yes, that’s the name of their mascot) is famously silent.

But on the 199th anniversary of National American Sign Language (ASL) Day, he broke his silence both on Instagram with the video below, and on YouTube with a longer video — a great example of paring down a longer YouTube video to fit Instagram’s platform.

In the video, the Burger King calls on their deaf fans to ask what the official sign for their famous burger, the “Whopper,” should be. The video encourages fans to submit ideas via social media using the #WhopperSign hashtag.

When a winning hand sign was picked, here’s how they changed their logo to celebrate:

Image Credit: AdAge

3. GoPro

If you know anything about GoPro, you’re probably picturing the company’s Instagram account accurately: extreme sports shot from GoPro’s classic fish-eye lens. The video below is one of the few longer Instagram videos out there that you’re happy to watch all the way through. Right from the still image before you press play, you know what’s waiting for you.

The video’s first-person point of view gives you an intensely intimate experience that any business page desires to give to its followers.

4. Reebok

Inspiring content tends to do very well on social media, especially Instagram. This video is clearly the work of professionals, which not every brand has the resources for. But the message, which is part of a larger campaign shared across their website and other social networks, is both beautiful and shareable: You have 25,915 days: What will you do with them?

5. BuzzFeed Tasty

The videos BuzzFeed Tasty puts out on Instagram and Facebook are simply perfect for those two platforms: They’re visual, helpful, shareable, light-hearted … and, best of all, they’re simple. When I watch these videos, I want to save them somewhere so I can refer back to them when I want to make the recipe myself. (Plus, I love the music they use.)

“We want people to be able to watch the video and feel like they can pull it off at home,” Andrew Gauthier, creative director of BuzzFeed Motion Pictures, told CBS.

The folks at BuzzFeed have published more than 500 “Tasty” videos since last July, and they’ve been viewed 14 billion times, mostly on Facebook. But these videos are perfect for Instagram’s visual platform, too. Thanks to Instagram’s decision to extend video length to 60 seconds, BuzzFeed is able to post full recipe videos along with a caption explaining exactly how it’s done.

6. Livia Sala

Here’s another food- and recipe-related Instagram video that took a different approach than BuzzFeed Tasty. In this video, Milan-based food stylist Livia Sala captured the process of making ravioli on video, complete with cute “commentary” from some of the ingredients on the list.

Instead of using fluid video, Sala uses a series of still shots, one after another. This is called a “stop action video” from still photos, which you can create by taking still photos and uploading them to iMovie on your computer or phone. This is a great video because it’s delightful and fun — are you seeing the trend here? The post was a Shorty Award finalist for Best Instagram Video in 2013.

7. Allstate

Think insurance companies are limited to boring content? Allstate has always set themselves apart from the crowd with their entertaining commercials and social media presence.

But they don’t just put out the same videos on every one of their social outlets. Instead, they carefully cater their content to the platform they’re publishing on. (For example, this YouTube video of theirs looks like a normal commercial, but turns into a “choose your own adventure” type game.)

On Instagram, some of the videos they post are video memes — this is a meme format we haven’t seen many brands use. People love memes on Instagram because they’re funny and shareable, and folks tend to tag their friends in the comments, thereby expanding the post’s reach. That’s exactly what happens with Allstate’s video memes, like the one below.

8. Ikea

Here’s an example of a short, snackable video that showcases a product in a funny way. In this case, Ikea’s showing off its anti-slip mat with a scene of a dad chasing his son (who happens to be wearing a hilarious monster costume).

This video is great because it doesn’t just show what the product looks like. In fact, you barely see the product itself. Instead, it shows the product’s benefits — and in a way that lets viewers see the brand’s personality. Instagram users love seeing personality behind Instagram content, which is why it does so well for engagement. So the next time you want to showcase a new product, consider showing it off in a humorous way.

9. Camp Brand Goods

This Canadian outdoor adventure apparel company consistently posts great content on Instagram. Not only is their Instagram content always high quality, but they use it to showcase the lifestyle they build around their products, not just the products themselves.

“[On Instagram,] it’s less about the product than it is about sharing good times,” said Camp Brand Goods’ Leslie McNeilly. “We tend to post an even mix of scenery shots and product shots. We created our own hashtag [#keepitwild], and we award a T-shirt weekly to an Instagram user who is caught keeping it wild.”

While they haven’t done many videos, the one below is a great one. It has the same look and feel as their photos on Instagram, especially with that vintage, faded look, with perfectly matching music.

10. Ben & Jerry’s

Here’s an example of a great product announcement video on Instagram from Ben & Jerry’s. We love that the video shows a fictional way the product was made — as if it were as easy as putting cookie dough and Oreos in an empty pint and shaking it up. It’s another great way for a brand to show its personality using short videos.

The video’s playful tone is perfect for Instagram — and so is the length. Although Instagram is starting to allow longer videos, it’s important to remember that users are often scrolling through their feeds when they come upon a video, and many may not want to watch for more than ten or twenty seconds. This would’ve been a great video to share on Facebook, too, because of that playful tone and short length.

11. Wistia

How-to videos are a popular video format for many brands — but the key is making these videos interesting enough for the Instagram platform. The folks at Wistia did a great job of using cool angles along with text to capture viewers’ attention right away — without them needing to turn the sound on. (In fact, this video doesn’t have sound at all.)

Then, they used the caption to point viewers to the link in their bio for the full instructional video. (Note: When you ask people to follow a link in your Instagram bio, make sure you make that link trackable.)

12. CBRE

Nothing like a breathtaking time lapse to mesmerize your followers on Instagram. You might not think a commercial real estate and investment services firm like CBRE would have beautiful content to post, but it’s videos like this that have the ability to showcase the more visually pleasing sides of the industry.

Even if you work for a “boring” industry, you can come up with creative ideas that cater to what type of content your audience wants. One key thing to keep in mind — especially on Instagram’s platform — is to make your content relatable and approachable. In other words, make it human. No one who’s scrolling through their Instagram feed wants to see a cut-and-dry product update. They’ll scroll right past it and on to their friend’s video of his cat.

Instead, produce videos that help you form an emotional connection with your fans, as CBRE did with this stunning video, the beauty of which anyone can appreciate.

13. Califia Farms

Califia Farms is another brand that consistently creates awesome Instagram content. They tend to post a solid mix of photos and video content, including fun, playful videos and GIFs like the one below. Here, they’re announcing a new product with a sort of “slow reveal” — but one that’s visually compelling enough for users to stick around.

If you like the idea of posting animated videos to your own Instagram account, they aren’t actually all that difficult and expensive to create. Here’s a list of 10 easy-to-use tools for creating animated photos and videos to get you started.

14. Flixel Photos

Here’s a stunning image from Flixel Photos. … Or is it a video? It’s actually something called a “cinemagraph,” which is kind of a combination of the two. A cinemagraph is a file format used to create short, infinitely-looping animations for the web that look like images with a moving component. The effect is really cool: It’s like experiencing a living moment.

Creating a cinemagraph isn’t as hard as it looks. Here are seven tips from Flixel photos on making your cinemagraphs remarkable.

15. Dunkin’ Donuts

A video doesn’t have to be long to be successful. In fact, the video below from Dunkin’ Donuts is literally three still images put together into a video. This is another example of a “stop action video” from still photos, which you can create by taking still photos and uploading them to iMovie on your computer or phone.

While this video is super simple, what makes it great is its timeliness (in celebration of Mother’s Day) and that it’s funny, unexpected, and therefore shareable. Donuts given like flowers? Yes, please.

16. WeWork

Another great use case for Instagram? Showcasing your company culture. Instagram’s a great platform for positioning your brand as a friendly face and building a voice and personality to build a relationship with followers. It doesn’t hurt for recruitment, either.

Here’s a wonderful and whimsical video that cuts together short clips from WeWork’s company party. Kids breakdancing, someone dressed up as a snowman, employees talking and laughing … they did a great job of showcasing the employees’ personalities and making the party look really fun.

17. Saturday Night Live

The American TV show Saturday Night Live produces great video content by its very nature — but that’s not the only reason why their Instagram videos are so good. They have their Instagram promotion down to a science.

“It’s found a successful formula for extending each show way past the broadcast date, and for re-purposing TV content for the online generation, with micro-video playing a huge part of that,” writes Carla Marshall for ReelSEO.com. “Take the 2nd April show, which featured Game of Thrones actor Peter Dinklage, and singer Gwen Stefani. Both appeared in a very odd little sketch called ‘Space Shorts/Pants’ which SNL then uploaded to Facebook, and YouTube, and to Instagram, where it generated over 70K views. By using its social media presence, the brand was able to extend the buzz around the sketch for days, even weeks, after.”

Struggling to create short but sweet Instagram content that drives engagement with your business? Download some inspiring Instagram post and story templates below to improve your game.

I have some bad news: Your email marketing database degrades by about 22.5% every year.

Your contacts’ email addresses change as they move from one company to another, opt-out of your email communication, or abandon that old AOL address they only use to fill out forms on websites.

As a marketer, it’s your job to make sure you’re constantly adding fresh contacts to your email marketing campaigns so you can keep your numbers moving up and to the right. (But not by purchasing email lists — learn why you should never buy an email list in this post.)

If you’re not working on building your email list already, or you’ve run out of ideas to do so, here are 29 simple ways to grow that email list.

29 Creative List Building Techniques

Using Email

1. Create remarkable email content

Your content needs to be amazing if you want people to stay subscribed and forward your emails to their own network. If it’s entertaining enough, they’ll always look forward to your emails.

2. Encourage subscribers to share and forward your emails

Include social sharing buttons and an “Email to a Friend” button in your marketing emails. That way, you’ll gain access to their friends, colleagues, and networks and expand your contact list. At the bottom of your emails, include a “Subscribe” CTA as a simple text-based link so that the people receiving the forwarded emails can easily opt-in, too.

3. Segment your email lists by buyer persona

Use varying types of email subscriptions to send more targeted content to specific segments of your marketing personas. Email recipients are more likely to click through emails that cater to their specific interests, so if you create multiple, targeted subscription types, you’ll increase the chance that visitors will subscribe to one of them.

4. Reinvigorate a stale email list with an opt-in campaign

Do you have an older list that you suspect has mostly decayed? Create an engaging opt-in message and send it to your old list encouraging contacts who wish to re-opt-in — promising to remove all contacts who don’t respond. Though it might seem counterintuitive to remove folks from your email lists in order to grow them, emailing only engaged contacts could improve your deliverability and increase the odds of your email getting shared with those outside your current contacts database.

5. Add a link to your employees’ signatures

Hyperlinked email signatures can lead people to a landing page where they can sign up for your mailing list. Plus, if you’re already in a natural email conversation with them, subscribing to more emails can be a natural next step.

With New Content

6. Create a new lead-generation offer 

Develop a free ebook or whitepaper and host it on a landing page that asks visitors to provide their email address in order to download it. This is called a “gated offer.” (Need ideas? This blog post lists 23 ways to create lead-generation content quickly and easily.)

7. Create a free online tool or resource

Free online tools make your users’ lives easier, and all they have to do is sign up with their email address. For example, we’ve created quite a few free tools, like Marketing Grader, to gather email addresses.

8. Create ‘Bonus’ Content

Not all gated content is worth it to a website visitor. In order to gain their interest, you need to give them free content first. Start with a blog post that offers beginner advice on a subject, then offer “bonus” content with more advanced tips that they can access by submitting their email address via a landing page.

Using Social Media

9. Promote an online contest

Use your social media accounts to host a free giveaway in exchange for contact information. Encourage entrants to click through to your website and sign up using their email address. 

10. Promote one of your lead-gen offers on Twitter

Create a Twitter campaign to promote an ebook or a free resource to your followers that requires an email address to redeem. 

11. Promote an offer through Facebook that requires an email address

Promote content on your Facebook Timeline that your followers can sign up to access. Be sure to add social sharing buttons to the landing pages and thank-you pages you send them to so you encourage your leads to share those offers with their own networks.

12. Add a call-to-action button to the top of your Facebook Business Page

We added calls-to-action (CTAs) on our Facebook page for HubSpot Academy below. The value in this list building technique is in the destination: Link your Facebook page’s CTA button to a landing page that requires an email address for access to a special resource.

13. Publish links to gated offers via social media

Use your Facebook Business page or LinkedIn Company Page to post links to the same gated offers you might also host on your blog posts. You can also do this in appropriate and relevant LinkedIn group discussions — just be mindful of the topic being discussed to ensure your offer is a welcome addition to the conversation.

14. Use Pinterest to promote gated visual content

Pinterest can play host to visual content that encourages visitors to sign up to see more content. For example, HubSpot created a Pinterest board where we pin the well-designed covers of our marketing ebooks. From this board, we’ve been able to generate new leads and grow our email list.

15. Add engagement features to your YouTube channel

Add hyperlinked “end cards” to your YouTube videos that encourage people to subscribe to your channel via their email address. You can see an example of this below, to the bottom right of the video screen. You can also include links to relevant landing pages in your videos’ text captions below your published video.

On Your Website

16. Ask website visitors for feedback

People enjoy offering feedback on information that pertains to them. On certain pages of your website, include a form that asks visitors what questions they might have about your business. You might also create a live chat tool that invites questions and email addresses from people who have stayed on your website for a certain amount of time.

17. Shorten the length of your lead-capturing forms

It’s tempting to collect as much information on a user as possible right away, but adding too many fields to your landing pages and lead-capturing forms can actually scare people off. Reduce the length of your forms to just two to three fields — you can collect more information from them once you start a conversation.

18. Link to offers across your website that capture email signups

Don’t make people dig around your site to stumble across subscription options. Keep your offers up front, and include calls-to-action on multiple pages of your website. Some key places to consider include your website’s homepage, your ‘About Us’ page, and your ‘Contact Us’ page.

19. A/B test different campaign copy

You might be doing all the right things to generate leads — landing pages, gated content, contests, and more. The problem might be that the design or copy itself isn’t driving the engagement you need. A/B test (also known as “split test”) different aspects of your list-building campaigns with different versions of the same content. This includes the call-to-action text, the color of the gated offer, the time of day you’re posting to social media, and even where on your website these signup forms are placed. Sometimes a small change can drive hundreds more conversions.

20. Create a blog that readers can subscribe to

If you don’t already blog, you should! Blog posts help you increase your ranking on search engines like Google, and allow you collect blog subscribers that you can then upgrade to more actionable email campaigns over time.

21. Guest blog for other websites with a call-to-action

There are tons of websites and publishers out there that cater to your audience — and larger portions of it. Guest blogging for these websites helps you expand your contact list to this audience. When creating content as a guest blogger for another website, include a call-to-action, as well as a link in you author byline, for readers to subscribe to your site’s blog or email newsletter.

22. Include customer reviews on your website and landing pages

Customer reviews are the “social proof” that encourages people to join in on something. It’s one thing for you to tell people to sign up for a campaign, but it’s another thing for your happiest customers to say it too. Publish your best reviews from communities like Yelp right to your website. This adds genuine value to your landing pages when people are on the fence about submitting their contact information. 

With a Partner

23. Run a promotion on a partner website or email newsletter

Similar to guest blogging, partner websites can allow you to target a new but appropriate audience with a campaign on your own website. Use this partner source to direct visitors back to your website — where you’re already collecting email addresses.

24. Host a co-marketing offer with a partner 

Creating an ebook or webinar with a partner can split up the work of content creation and allow you to share the audience of a similar business. After you release your content, split the leads you generate with your partner.

With Traditional Marketing

25. Collect email addresses at a trade show 

Offline events like trade shows are highly anticipated growth opportunities for professionals in your industry. Demo your latest product at an appropriate conference and collect signups in-person. Once you’re back at the office, import these signups into your contact database. Be sure to send these contacts a welcome email that confirms their opt-in to your list. (See #8 in this blog post for tips on sending welcome emails.)

26. Host your own offline, in-person events

Meetups, seminars, hackathons, educational panels, and even your own conferences put you front and center of a networking event, and those who attend are often more qualified to be contacted because they came to your event. Take the opportunity to collect email addresses in exchange for the info and demos you provide at the event.

27. Host an online webinar

Webinars are the perfect opportunity to talk about your industry and access the audience of thought leaders whom you might want to present with. The best part? Webinars are normally registered for via email, making your listeners more willing to be contacted afterward. Collect email addresses at registration.

28. Add QR codes to your display ads

Incorporate a QR code into your print marketing collateral that people can scan for more information on the printed content. Create the QR code such that it requires an email address to access the additional content. (There are many free QR code makers online that make this process easy.)

29. Collect emails in your store

If you have a brick-and-mortar presence where you interact with customers face-to-face, create an email campaign just for those walk-ins. Launch a store membership they can sign up for via email at the register. This is a smart way to keep in touch with repeat customers and reward their loyalty to your product.

These are all examples of things you can start doing today to increase your business’ email database. Many of them are not complicated or difficult to implement. The key is to attack email list-building from as many angles as possible.

As you grow your email list with fresh, opt-in contacts, you’ll be able to nurture them with middle-of-the-funnel offers that allow you to convert early-stage leads into sales-ready leads.